I Was Wrong About Classified

Last week I was excited to see the new collaborative product launch from the brands Classified and TRP. I have only just written a largely negative post about Classified, and their less than ideal position in the market. However, this new collaboration with TRP changes a lot of things; and this new partnership seems like the most optimal way to overcome their shortcomings. Let me explain.

The biggest hurdles that the Classified hub faces is that up until this point, the product does not cleanly integrate into the existing groupset options. They have always required a little bit of creative thinking to make them work, including multiple extra batteries and little electronic shift buttons hidden under the bar tape. Yet now, with the new TRP/Classified Vistar groupset, the Classified hub is tightly integrated into the whole system. This means in addition to being able to shift the hub with a normal shift lever integrated into the brake; the system can do things like automatically shift between the two gears in the hub (similar to Shimano Di2 synchro shift). In my opinion, this makes the Classified hub ready to move past the early adopters phase and start selling competitively to the mass market.

This product can be a notable turning point for Classified; and it couldn't come at a better time. As someone who follows the bike tech news stories closely, I have been hearing less and less about Classified. My observation was that it seemed like the attention span of the industry was starting to move away from Classified and towards other new trends. Additionally, the path forward for Classified was not obvious, and neither of the big drivetrain manufacturers appeared interested in integrating the technology into their system. Albeit, I have to admit, I did not consider TRP to be the perfect partner for this next era of Classified’s story.

TRP or their parent company Tektro is not just throwing Classified a lifeline without getting something in return. Despite being reportedly the largest manufacturer of bike hydraulic brakes, Tektro is facing a fundamental threat to their business in the form of a sharp increase in competition. Each summer, I have noticed that there are more and more options for good hydraulic brakes from lots of companies big and small, especially in the entry-level segment. This is going to put downwards pricing pressure on all hydraulic brakes, meaning that brakes are going to become less profitable to sell. Tektro knows this, and is assumingly why they have been trying to break into the drivetrain market.

In the last few sessions, we have seen TRP release a mountain drivetrain. Despite getting okay reviews, I have seen almost no adoption of this product line; and this brings me to the big hurdle that TRP has to cracking the drivetrain market. This is, of course, that the offerings from Shimano and SRAM are really really good, and without anything different to offer, there is very little reason for a consumer to choose anything else. So this is how Classified can help TRP, the integration with the Classified system may be enough for consumers and product managers alike to choose TRP drivetrains over the safer choices from SRAM/Shimano.

So, what does this mean for the cycling industry? I would argue that it represents a few things. Firstly, we may see some more bikes come spec’d from the factory with the Classified system now the integration is more refined. However, this product announcement symbolizes something more interesting to me, the slow acceptance of some internal geared systems on our bikes. I see a future where a lot of people's next bike has a Classified hub, where the front derailleur is replaced by an internal gear system… and then their bike after that will have a gearbox where the entire gear system is moved internally.